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Surprisingly fun science: Great success for Xperimania workshops
 The Xperimania (www.xperimania.net) Science Ambassadors’ tour in spring 2010 reached nearly 400 students in schools across Europe. Both teachers and students were very happy with the science workshops: "I never thought chemistry could be so much fun," was how one participant summed up his experience.
“It's been a tremendous success. We had a really high demand for workshops and we saw that the students and teachers really enjoyed them,” said the Xperimania ambassadors.
“The kids had the chance to really get messy and get their hands on the science.”
The Science Ambassadors wanted to show teachers and students easy and fun chemistry and physics experiments, and thus boost young people’s interest in science.
Each of the 18 workshops started with a short discussion about students’ preconceptions of science and whether they liked it or not. Then, to get a step deeper into the topic, the students were asked to name petrochemical products from their everyday life and their properties.
By investigating and testing a plastic glove that each student had received from the ambassadors, the students found out about some common properties of petrochemical products, such as elasticity, flexibility, durability, strength and transparency.
After that, the real fun started: the ambassadors had prepared six hands-on experiments, of which 3-4 were carried out in each workshop. The experiments followed a real scientific method, the OHERIC method of Observing, making Hypotheses, Experimenting, getting Results, Interpreting the results and drawing Conclusions.
Read more about the workshops and the experiments at
http://www.xperimania.net
About Xperimania Science Ambassadors
Altogether 432 schools from 24 countries applied for the science workshops organised by the Xperimania ambassadors. An international jury selected six schools which the ambassadors visited from February to June 2010. In addition, a pilot workshop was organized in one extra school.
Visited schools:
- Portugal: E.B. 2,3 de Alcanede in Alcanede
- Romania: Traian Vuia in Maramures
- Slovenia: Osnovna šola heroja Janeza Hribarja in Stari trg pri Ložu
- Spain: IES J. Ibáñez Martín in Lorca (pilot school)
- United Kingdom: Bartley Green School, St Francis Primary School and Highters Heath Community School in Birmingham
Ambassadors:
- Agueda Gras-Velazquez
- Alexa Joyce
- Lidia Minza
- Barbara Schwarzenbacher
- Johanna Snellman
- Jacqueline Strypstein
- Ann Whent
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